Use Bandcamp, but Do Not Trust Bandcamp

To prevent burying the leede. Buy your music, but make sure you download it in the best format you can and keep it backed up. Do NOT trust services like Bandcamp, Amazon, or Apple to keep your music you purchased. My Relationship with My Music Library I have made it no secret I love music. I love consuming it, decorating time with it, DJing, making it, all of it. Outside of a very brief stint in the 1990’s with Limewire and in the 2010’s with Spotify, then Apple Music I have always been buy on buying and having my music collection. ...

April 29, 2025 · 5 min · Ame the Squirrel
A collage of Stephanie's Smile

The Day I Lost One of the Most Important People in my Life

This post is written in mourning. Today I lost one of the most colorful humans in my life. Steph was absolutely the most amazing, delightful, and powerful women I have had the opportunity to love. Since the early 2000’s with all those nights at nightclubs, to the nearly decade as partners, to her help with my transition, she has changed my life for the better over and over and over. ...

March 13, 2025 · 2 min · Ame the Squirrel

Pomodoro for Success

One of the most annoying ADHD superpowers is many ADHDer’s are able to easily adapt to new techniques and systems, but that nothing seems to work forever. In one of the many ADHD books I have read recently, there was a specific callout that the brain craves novelty so much that it’s healthier to expect routines to work for a limited time. The recommendation was to give yourself a lot of grace for when your habits start to fall apart and instead use the flexibility to pick up something new, or old to keep evolving your system. ...

February 25, 2025 · 9 min · Ame the Squirrel

Jumping Onto the Uses Bandwagon

Another quick update for the website! While reading some articles about how to do cool stuff with sqlc I found yet another “Uses” page where the blogger shows off their list full of favorite tools and toys. Since I like to share cool tips and toys and tricks I thought i would make one too, now in the Uses Section of the sidebar. Mine isn’t as nice as this one, but I aspire to get it to that point eventually. Check it out if you want to know what cool stuff I am into these days.

February 23, 2025 · 1 min · Ame the Squirrel

Full Text Feeds

I have updated my templates so that my RSS feeds are full text! There is absolutely no reason to drive you to this site if you can read it in the comfort of whatever reader makes you happy. Sorry it was not beforehand, it’s not the default for hugo.

January 29, 2025 · 1 min · Ame the Squirrel

Life After Facebook

What a dramatic title for this post! Let’s be honest. I didn’t use facebook that much to begin with. But this post is about life after Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and to a partial extent YouTube as well. I am letting go of Web 2.0. But Why? I am letting go of my “Web 2.0” social media and moving on to more decentralized things like my own hosted blog and Mastodon for several reasons. ...

January 29, 2025 · 6 min · Ame the Squirrel

Fix Crashing on AMD GPU on Debian 12

This year I replaced my work computer with a AMD Ryzen 7 8700G running Debian 12. This was mostly ok, but I was getting the most random and rare hard lockups. I was super confused and frustrated as all my burn in tests came back clean with no issues. I even tried a short stint on Ubuntu 24.10 to see it it would help, but it still happened. Then I tried a GPU benchmarking tool and it hard locked my computer every time it tried to load. Since this was a work computer I hardly ever really engaged the GPU seriously. Turns out the GPU was fine, but the drivers were not. ...

November 23, 2024 · 2 min · Ame the Squirrel

Where are I and AI

After Writing about AI and cohorts I wanted to spend time putting down where I am with AI, hopefully this is a post that grows and changes as my feelings do. Also sorry for the grammar in the title, I think it sounds clever. As a Consumer As somebody who consumes a lot of books, art, & music I want hand created content for a few reasons. Reason 1: I Buy Stuff I pay for content; I buy books by the droves, I purchase music directly,1 and I commission art from artists2 as well as have an active Patreon subscription I am always struggling to cull back. ...

November 22, 2024 · 5 min · Ame the Squirrel

Media Consumer Cohorts and AI

I saw something about cohorts and AI usage and it got this whole idea stuck in my head so I decided to write it out and maybe it’s enough to make you think about how you feel about AI content itself and where it brings entertainment and value to you. Now that the “AI boom” has started to plateau and mature I see two broad cohorts of people when it comes to ingesting media and services. These are the consumers, not the creators. ...

November 22, 2024 · 3 min · Ame the Squirrel

The Union of Obsidian and Hugo

Preamble Since I am brining back this blog and plan on writing a lot more I wanted to make it a lot easier. Historically this blog has been written in Vim/NeoVim, which while being a very proficient editor, is not optimal for free flow text for me. An Idea Last year consolidated my journal and all of my notes into Obsidian. In the past I used MacJournal and then Day One for my journaling and Bear for my notes, but every time I would end up locked out of my data when trying to export to a new system. ...

November 15, 2024 · 4 min · Ame the Squirrel